Elinor Carucci | Hannah Altman
Koffler Arts is excited to welcome photographers Elinor Carucci and Hannah Altman to our gallery for an exhibition (May 29 - August 17), curated by Toronto-based artist Barbara Astman. The exhibition highlights the unique dynamic that exists between each artist's practice and their different life stages, exploring life from a Jewish feminist perspective, including womanhood, rituals, family, and the human condition.
Carucci’s works at Koffler Arts are a selection from Midlife (2011-2019), a photographic series and corresponding book (The Monacelli Press, 2019) never previously exhibited in its present format. This body of work explores the middle stage of life from a highly personal, female perspective. It delves into themes of the body, health, relationships and, overall, brings attention to the challenges of this period in a woman's life. “In this series, I aim to address the global aspects of middle age, drawing from the deepest and most intimate places in me, a middle-aged woman myself,” says Carucci.
Altman’s work explores themes of ritual and lineage, memory and storytelling, incorporating aspects of Jewish culture. The works at Koffler Arts are from her most recent series, We Will Return To You, with a corresponding book (Saint Lucy Books, 2025). As Altman describes, “From mouth to ear to pen to performance, Jewish myths evolve across the diaspora, braiding themselves into past and future.”
As Astman writes, she, Carucci, and Altman “represent collectively three generations of image-makers who explore life from a feminist perspective. It has been an honour and pleasure to ‘dig deeper’ – to quote Carucci from an interview with Altman – into the work and careers of these two very exciting artists who bring a highly personal Jewish approach to their photographic works.”
For media inquiries please contact Melissa Than mthan@kofflerarts.org.
Elinor Carucci is a fine art photographer whose work has been exhibited worldwide in both solo and group exhibitions. Her images have been featured in major international publications and are held in the permanent collections of institutions such as The Museum of Modern Art, The Jewish Museum, and the Brooklyn Museum. Carucci has received numerous prestigious awards, including the ICP Infinity Award (2001), a Guggenheim Fellowship (2002), and a New York Foundation for the Arts Fellowship (2010). She has published five monographs: Closer, Diary of a Dancer, MOTHER, MIDLIFE, and most recently, The Collars of Ruth Bader Ginsburg. She teaches in the graduate program of Photography at the School of Visual Arts and at Hunter College Art Department and is represented by Edwynn Houk Gallery.
Hannah Altman is a Jewish-American artist from New Jersey, now based in Boston, Massachusetts. She holds an MFA from Virginia Commonwealth University. Her photographs portray lineage, folklore, memory, and narrative. Altman’s work has been exhibited at Virginia Museum of Contemporary Art, Silver Eye Center for Photography, and Technical Collections Dresden Museum, among others. Publications where her work has appeared include The New York Times, Artforum, and Vanity Fair. Altman was the 2022 Portraits Hellerau Photography Award First Prize Winner, a 2023 Innovate Grant Recipient, and a 2023 Aperture Portfolio Prize Finalist. She became the inaugural Blanksteen Artist in Residence at the Slifka Center for Jewish Life at Yale in 2022. Altman’s first photobook Kavana (2020, Kris Graves Projects) is in collections including the libraries at the Museum of Modern Art and The Metropolitan Museum of Art. Her monograph We Will Return to You (2025) is published by Saint Lucy Books.
